The Identification and Representation of Views

Abstract

This chapter describes the actual work of the historian of philosophy. Ordinarily, the historian is working with a text, or even a number of texts, on the basis of which he will try to reconstruct the thought of a philosopher. This is the standard case in the history of medieval philosophy, and it is almost invariably the case for the historian of modern philosophy. In the case of ancient philosophy, however, the primary aim is not to understand certain texts, but to understand the thought of a philosopher underlying a text, if there is one. The historian has to understand and to explain a philosopher’s taking a view from the point of view of a contemporary historian of philosophy, and this means that he has to identify——to represent——the philosopher’s view not only in terms in which it is intelligible to a modern historian of philosophy, but also in terms in which it is intelligible to the historian’s modern audience. And this raises at least two questions, one concerning the translation this involves and the other concerning the language of the historian.